


A Heavy Cross to Carry Alone

by TimAndJava



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, John Johnson the Metaphysical Goalie, Larissa "Lardo" Duan is a Good Bro, Short One Shot, because girls and guys can be bros, self harm and suicide are mentioned but no one engages in them, there is no trauma in this fic i swear, two bros chillin on a reading roof, without any romantic implications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 09:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18091613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimAndJava/pseuds/TimAndJava
Summary: Johnson and Lardo are alone on a rooftop. A short conversation occurs.





	A Heavy Cross to Carry Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a tumblr post that made me have feelings about my favorite goalie (Chowder and Marc-Andre Fleury are tied for a close second). If you want to see me rant about Check, Please! and other fandom things, take a walk on over to @banana-blogs on the good 'ole tumblr dot com. Also if you're someone who reads my stuff on the reg, sorry I hardly post anymore. College is hard. Love you for reading anyways, though. Also, yes, I did steal this title from a Gossip song.

“Do you ever wonder what the point of all of this is, Johnson?” Lardo asks him up on the roof one night. The reading room is the only part of the Haus that isn’t crawling with kegster attendees, and Johnson and Lardo had been eager to escape the party’s chaos and smoke in peace. 

Johnson hesitates before answering. Lardo’s question sounded almost like a red flag. Like he should wonder if she’s going to hurt herself, or something. He can hear his psychologist mother in his head, reminding him about the warning signs of self-harm and suicide, and he’s rattled for a moment.

But then, Johnson remembers that it’s not some random, unnamed character he’s talking to. It’s Lardo. Lardo, the manager. Lardo, Shitty’s something. Lardo, Bitty’s best friend. So he sets his panic aside.

Because he knows how this story goes, and he knows that Lardo gets out of it alive.

By the time Johnson gets out of his own head, too much time has passed, and the silence has gone on too long. Lardo has turned in her lawn chair to look at him, and squints suspiciously.

“Not really,” Johnson says finally.

Lardo is silent for another beat, and she cocks her head to one side.

“Where do you go, Johnson?” she asks. “Where’s your brain when you get all spacey and take to long to answer my burning questions?”

“Just wherever, Lards,” Johnson answers with a shrug. “Gotta go somewhere, you know?”

“How come?”

Johnson sighs. It’s not easy to put his thoughts into words, it never has been. To be born into a world that you know on some level isn’t real is a tough burden to carry. To always know what will happen to his friends and to have to constantly guide them through the story can be exhausting.

But it’s why he was created in the first place, he remembers.

“A guy just has to be in his own head sometimes, Lardo. When you’re not a part of the real narrative, sometimes your own head is the only place where you can be, you know?”

“What the hell is the real narrative, bro?” 

“Ask yourself that,” Johnson says, pausing to take a hit from his blunt, “you’re in it a hell of a lot more often than I am.”

Lardo stares at him for a minute, and then breaks out into a fit of laughter.

“You’re so fucking weird, John,” she says.

“Yeah,” Johnson says lowly, “I really am.”


End file.
